Dearest Gentle Reader, this Friday brings a monarch baring his tax bill to the nation, a government minister telling his superior to 'stay classy' from the digital salons, and forty hospital staff whose curiosity has proved rather more dangerous than their patient's reptilian assailant. This Author's lorgnette has been working quite the overtime - read on, if you dare.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this very Thursday has delivered a political pantomime so perfectly constructed one suspects the actors rehearsed it. Lady Reeves endorses the man expected to demote her, Lord Trump delivers a verdict so magnificently unhelpful it proves his opponent's point entirely, and somewhere in North Britain, an entire nation squints at a statistical table with the expression of a person who has been here before and knows precisely how it ends - yet cannot quite bring themselves to look away.

Dearest Gentle Reader, the Southern Kingdom broils at thirty-seven degrees and the corridors of power run equally hot - a Chancellor faces demotion, a defence plan presses on without its Prime Minister, and a national inquiry at last names the towns where truth has too long been buried. This Author has much to report, and not all of it may be borne lightly.